Posted on 12/19/2017 10:31:10 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
After a wave of stunning announcements and admissions about the serious alleged sexual misbehavior of Harvey Weinstein and others, observers might wonder whether any of the accusations pouring forward are exaggerated, or even false. Most denials have been strangely and unpersuasively worded, as in "I don't remember it that way." On the other hand, some accusations are raising eyebrows.
Does every charge amount to sexual harassment? Take the case of MSNBC's Chris Matthews. The Daily Caller reported that Matthews paid a $40,000 settlement to an employee back in the 1990s for "making inappropriate comments and jokes about her while in the company of others." The Clintons and the Weinsteins dropping their pants and making demands -- that's harassment. But if this is the extent of Matthews' guilt, he's a pig, not a harasser.
The picture is also muddied by accusers like Addie Zinone, who appeared on NBC's "Megyn Kelly TODAY" (aka "Megyn Kelly's Daily Sexual-Misconduct Accusation Show") to announce that she had consensual sex with Matt Lauer but now, looking back, finds it to be an "abuse of power," since he was a middle-aged star and she was a lowly 24-year-old production assistant. A memo to Zinone: You were a 24-year-old woman. Act your age. If he's a scoundrel, so are you.
Then there's makeup artist Kailey Kaminsky, who accused HGTV star Carter Oosterhouse of badgering her into performing oral sex. She told The Hollywood Reporter: "I was so worn down from his advances, so I did: that day, on that occasion. It was the first time. Then thereafter it was most every time we would shoot -- 10 to 15 times he put me in this position."
For his part, Oosterhouse acknowledged their intimate relationship ... but insisted there was consent and more. He said in his statement to The Hollywood Reporter: "I would have never done anything that I was not sure was mutually agreeable. The reality is that I knew it was consensual because she initiated it the first time and many of the 15 or so times we had oral sex thereafter." Kaminsky asserts her job was threatened. She says he once asked her whether she enjoyed her work. When she said yes and that she'd like to advance in her position, he stated he could be helpful if ... you get the point. But if that happened, that was not a threat. It was an offer. And she accepted. She stated, "I definitely went out of my way to pretend it was something that I was participating in willfully." We don't buy it.
Speaking of makeup artists, Jill Harth filed a sexual harassment suit against Donald Trump in 1997 and renewed her allegations in the fall of 2016. John Solomon at The Hill reports that she repeatedly sent Trump gushing emails during his presidential campaign offering to do his makeup and even testify about how wonderfully he treated women. "I also want to put it out there that I would be willing to say at a rally or somewhere how DJT helped me with my self-confidence and all positive things about how he is with women to counter any potential negativity that may come out at some point in the campaign," she wrote.
(We're not watching CNN rushing to the president's defense.)
Then there's the old notion of cashing in on allegations. Solomon added that Harth's lawyer, Lisa Bloom, "eventually started a GoFundMe.com fundraising effort to help Harth and located a donor that paid off Harth's mortgage on her Queens apartment in New York City."
Imagine that.
Cases like these underline the need for a line of demarcation. There are levels. There's piggish behavior, immoral sexual activity, harassment. And, finally, there is assault. Women shouldn't be groped and harassed at the office. Businesses from Hollywood to Wall Street shouldn't tolerate powerful officials making sex a condition of career advancement. But it's also unfair for someone to consent to sex and then decide months or years later that it somehow wasn't consensual, destroying a man's career in the process.
Most cases aren't as clear-cut as an Al Franken prank photo. Evidence of harassment is often hard to produce, especially years or decades later. That's why cautious investigations and fine distinctions should be made before reputations and careers vanish within a news cycle.
No, Pence figured this out a long time ago. And from different directions, so did Trump and Gene Simmons.
This thing today is basically just chick lotto. Hear a dirty joke. Dress hot, then get a compliment on looking hot, then maybe get a free house, or a retirement.
I know a male physician who never closed the door to an exam room when his patient was a woman if he didn’t have one of his assistants present—and that was thirty years ago!
Franken doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
I absolutely agree. There are severely delineated degrees of sexual assault and harrassment.
Willingly submitting to bosses’ and coworkers’ requests doesn’t make you a victim unless you were actually threatened. Sorry. If you didn’t even attempt to say no, and you were of legal age, you need to see that this was YOUR mistake.
That is quite different from subordinates being tricked into hotel rooms with the boss in his untethered bathrobe. Or masturbated upon. Or demanded oral sex of. And when there is a threat, or when you’re drugged, we are talking serious victimhood. And, of course, when the subordinate is underage.
There are some grey areas, like young people not understanding that there WILL BE other jobs, and you dont really have to submit to this boss. Some people are very gullible and scared and think they are trapped rather than refuse.
And you know those girls will be the ones the Matt Lauers of the world will call into their office and drop trou in front of. But having an affair doesn’t mean you were a victim of abuse.
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